Four Ice Cream Bars
by YAJJ
Summary: It would take them a long time to stop buying four ice cream bars... slight Haynette, mostly just Twilight Town gang friendship fluff.
1. Chapter 1

Four Ice Cream Bars

A Kingdom Hearts fanfic

**YAJJ**

**Date:** 1/30/2014 12:20 am.

A/N: Hello, all! No, I'm not dead... just busy... Anyway, my parents got my sibs and I a nice PS3 and Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix (AWESOME by the way) so naturally, I've delved back into the KH fandom. This is my first finished Kingdom Hearts fic in several years, and I guess I deleted all of my others (but I so wanted to reread F is for Family... grr!) so technically it's my "first" KH fic. Yeah me! But I was inspired by lots of other fanfics, but mostly the KHII manga. I swear to god, at least three chapters before Roxas says "looks like my summer vacation is... over" I was already basically sobbing. And many times when he was mentioned as well, the poor darling. So I started writing this about four hours ago and... ta-da! Unbeta-ed, but I really like it! And I hope you do, too!

Summary: It would take them a long time to stop buying four ice cream bars.

Disclaimer: No, I don't own Kingdom Hearts. If I did, I would bring back Roxas all over the place and just smother him in love, because if anyone needs it, he does. God, I love him.

Okay, please enjoy!

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><p>Pence caught up with his friend one summer day, practically skipping to catch up with the only girl in their trio. "Hey, Olette," he said cheerfully.<p>

"Hi, Pence. You want an ice cream?" asked Olette with a smile, holding out the bag she was carrying to him.

Pence chirped with delight and took the bag, reaching in to claim his favorite treat. He felt all of the bars in there, all four -_was that even right?_- but he couldn't snatch at one. "Hey, 'Lette?" he asked, finally snatching one up and freeing it from its friends. He tore the packaging off and sucked on the treat.

"What's up?"

"Are we having a guest today 'r something? Is Sora coming back today?"

Olette peeked at him over the book she was reading. "What? What do you mean? I don't know."

"Well, you got four ice creams," Pence argued, lifting and bouncing the bag.

Olette stared at the bag, trying to see through the thick white plastic. "Hmm. I guess I did." Funny, she faintly recalled walking up to the counter, and now that she thought about it, she _had_ said four because there _should _be four… right? No… right? "Hey, you got that mini fridge in there, right? We'll just save it for a rainy day, I guess."

Pence shrugged in reply, sucking again on the ice cream. "Whatever. Your buy." He looked up at the sky solemnly. "I wonder if Sora's okay."

"I'm sure he's fine. Probably too busy hanging out with his girlfr—whatever she is. You know, to come see us. He hardly knew us, I mean."

"I know. But it'd be nice to know if he wasn't dead, you know."

"Mhmm. Maybe we'll save the ice cream for Sora when he shows up. Start collecting, you know. Shove it in his face when he gets here, for worrying us. But keep one to actually give him, 'cause we're not that mean."

Pence laughed. "Yeah, sure Olette. Let's."

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><p>It didn't matter that it was rainy out, and it didn't matter that Mom had said not to go out and aggravate his cold. He had promised to meet Olette and Pence at the Usual Spot one more time before high school "officially" started, and <em>he<em> didn't break promises, unlike someone else that he -_thought he-_ knew.

Mrs. Kaliman the ice cream lady tutted at him, handing over his bag of ice cream and stating that he looked pale, but he just thanked her and left, heading toward the Usual Spot with brightness in his step and wetness in his hair.

"There you are!" cheered Olette when he pushed aside the curtain, stepping into the little nook. A tarp was thrown up between the roofs, blocking out the drizzle.

"Here I am," he agreed, holding up the bag. "And I brought ice cream!"

"You're the best!" Pence shot to his feet and dropped the darts he'd been tossing. "Ice cream on a rainy day doesn't seem like it'd fit, but I think it tastes better."

"You don't even care as long as it's ice cream," said Hayner playfully, shoving his dark-haired friend. He reached into the bag to hand an ice cream to Olette and Pence, and then took one for himself. His fingers hovered there for just a moment, before he actually opened the bag and peered inside, confusion lighting his handsome features. "...Oh. I guess I bought four."

Olette glanced to Pence; hadn't they experienced this before? Olette still bought four ice creams whenever she paid. "That's okay," she said cheerfully. "We'll just stash it in there with all the others! Honestly, we don't even need to buy anymore ice cream; we've got enough stashed to last _ages_."

"Yeah…" Hayner said offhandishly, bringing the treat over to the mini-fridge to throw it in. They'd decided in the middle of summer last year that they wouldn't be shoving ice cream into Sora's face when -_if_- he came. Instead, they would just save the ice cream. See how long they could do it. After all, if they could save _ice cream_ as well as they were, who was to say that they couldn't save munny even better?

Pence shrugged and dropped to lean against the side of the couch. "Whatever, dude. We all make mistakes. And it's not like it's a bad one!" he laughed.

"I guess. It just seems… weird. Do you guys ever get the feeling that something's missing?"

Dark looks crossed Olette and Pence's faces, and he got a feeling that they thought the same thing. They didn't bring it up again.

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><p>If there was ever a time for ice cream, Pence decided one day, it was today. A week before the first finals of their first semester of their high school sophomore year, when Olette—who was taking all hard classes—was cramming in her studies and Hayner—not exactly brilliant but not stupid either—was trying to catch back up. They all hung out and did their homework in the Usual Spot, same as always, and they'd spent the past week doing nothing but that. It was time for a break.<p>

And who cared if it was winter? No one cared. Ice cream time was when anyone wanted ice cream, so ice cream time was all the time. Meaning it could be in the middle of the afternoon, just before dinnertime, in the beginning of a harsh winter.

The trek, though slightly chilly, was totally worth it. Pence arrived in ten minutes, the bars in the bag still perfectly chilly. He tossed the curtain aside and thumped the bag in front of Hayner, who studied at the broken coffee table. "You can thank me later."

Hayner looked at him, looking slightly amused, slightly perplexed, and slightly annoyed. Then he glanced down at the bag and his focused frown turned into a great big grin. "Ice cream?" he guessed, already opening the bag and reaching for one.

"Damn right it's ice cream. Take a break, eat up. You too, Olette!" Pence insisted. He picked a bar up and walked it right over to Olette, who gave a grateful, tired-looking grin, thanking him.

"...So it looks like you're doing it, too."

Pence looked toward Hayner, who had spoken almost solemnly.

Hayner responded by shoving his bar into his mouth and holding out two unopened packets of ice cream. For a moment, Pence was confused. Then, he understood. Hayner managed around his bar, "there's four."

"Yeah, I guess so. You guys are doing it so it must have rubbed off on me…" Pence laughed, taking the two bars so Hayner could actually enjoy his treat. He walked over to the freezer, which was actually not the mini-fridge that they had before; they had too many extra ice creams that they didn't want to eat to fit in the little mini-fridge, which was now sitting beside Olette, filled with sodas. He tossed the extra bar into the freezer, closing the lid and sitting on top of it.

"That's fine. I wonder if those things are still good?"

Pence and Olette made a face at the thought; even if they were, the thought of eating almost two-year old ice cream, that something had kept them from eating in the first place, was downright revolting. "No, thanks," Olette said, scrunching her nose. She sucked happily on the blue popsicle. "Wouldn't it be cool if we could stay like this, forever?" she asked dreamily, her eyes wide with wonder.

"Yeah…" Pence agreed.

Hayner snorted, dropping his finished ice cream stick. "We can't. We'll have to grow up some day, instead of hanging around in a dorky little clubhouse." He stood and tossed the stick toward the trash bin, smirking. Two points! "And besides, nothing really _stays_ the same anymore, does it?" He nodded pointedly toward the filling freezer, in which sat nearly two hundred extra bars of ice cream, labeled for someone that they couldn't remember.

Pence looked at Hayner, and then to Olette. Olette only shrugged and tucked back into her studies, ice cream now finished and forgotten. Pence removed his own homework as Hayner went back to his homework, and sat down to prepare for something as unimportant and short-lived as next week's tests.

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><p>After two and a half years, the first ice cream bar that was pulled out of the bag was always the one tossed into the freezer, to make sure that one was saved for the one that they couldn't remember. It never failed; over four hundred bars of ice cream were nestled in the overflowing freezer, and they had yet to touch any of them. It was like an unspoken promise: Four hundred bars of ice cream for the "friend" who would eventually return. A present of sorts.<p>

They liked saying that they were buying for four people, not three. Sometimes, Hayner would sit on one end of the couch and place the extra bar beside him, like it was for a person at his side. Olette liked to imagine that, sometimes at night, the person that they were saving the bars for came in and took one. Pence always made sure to grab the first ice cream and either pass it to Hayner, to set beside him, or to put it right in the freezer.

An odd group of people though they were, with memories that they didn't have burdening their hearts, but they'd have it no other way. After all, who ever said you couldn't have three best friends?

On a good day, Olette could look at the poster that she'd put up, point at the yellow bit of it, and say "that's the color of his hair," whoever their mysterious non-friend was. And Hayner and Pence would agree, and say how he styled it. Because they were certain, by now, that the mysterious non-friend that they could-but-couldn't remember was certainly a boy. They could sometimes look at the sky or sea and decide, "those are his eyes" and no one would protest. Because a boy with bright yellow hair and endless blue eyes just seemed to fit in their group.

Unfortunately, by the time they hit the middle of their senior year, those "good days" happened less and less, and slowly the non-friend slipped from their minds. Never completely, but… it still hurt, somehow, to think that they could forget someone who was clearly so important. It wasn't possible, right? Their hearts told them 'no', but their heads screamed 'yes'. And somehow, that was a lot scarier than moving on past high school.

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><p>On the eve of their high school graduation, Olette walked into the Usual Spot with a bag of ice cream. Her two friends were already there; Hayner splayed across the couch and playing with the marble he got from Sora, Pence leaning against a wall and tossing darts at the dartboard. "Hey guys, treat time!" she said, tossing the bag onto the table.<p>

Hayner shot up, the tie around his neck swaying eagerly in his excitement. "Yes! You always come through, 'Lette!" He cheered loudly in victory and made to grab for it.

Olette rolled her eyes in amusement. "My treat, guys. To surviving twelve years of school, and to surviving many years beyond that!"

Pence staggered to his feet and accepted the ice cream, ripping off the package. Then he reached back in the bag after Olette grabbed hers, reaching for the extra one that was always there to toss into the mini-fridge, alongside three years' worth of other ice creams accidentally bought.

...His hand met nothing.

"Olette?"

"Yes, Pence?" asked Olette around her ice cream, settling onto Hayner's lap once the blond relaxed on the couch.

"...You only bought three ice creams…"

Olette and Hayner both stiffened at the words. It had been common practice, and was always one hundred percent accidental, that Olette, Hayner or Pence would order an extra ice cream when they bought for all three. Now, Olette had just purchased three ice creams… One for Hayner, one for Pence, and one for Olette… leaving out the little friend that they'd always imagined was there to take the last.

Olette's fist clenched around her stick as she leaned back against her boyfriend. "Yeah… I guess I did. Took three years to figure it out, huh? Ha…" Her laugh was fake, almost broken. She had no reason to feel bad for not buying the last ice cream that would just sit there in the mini-fridge and freezer. But if that was so, why did it ache?

And judging by the looks crossing Hayner and Pence's faces, it was clear they felt the same way.

So why was it that after three years of buying four ice creams and abandoning one to the freezer, only now they felt like they'd lost a good friend?

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><p>So, I don't know why, but I really like the last section (I had that finished before anything else!) except for the last line. Any thoughts?<p>

Hey guys, um... please review? I need feedback on this since it's been so long, and I'm 97% sure that they were OOC and I'd just really appreciate it if I could get some help. Please and thank you! All review will be answered via PM.

Until next time,

~YAJJ


	2. Chapter 2

Four Ice Cream Bars-A Sequel

A Kingdom Hearts fanfic

**YAJJ**

**Date**: 5/18/2015: 11:06 PM

Summary: It took a lot longer than they liked to remember their non-friend, who they used to buy extra ice creams for all, those years ago.

Yeah, I'm "back". Hello! I didn't even realize I hadn't posted anything for a couple months, so when I did, I needed to get something up. This has _actually_ been written for about as long as the first one has been written... there were two other parts, but it was too rambly to have them on, and I _really_ liked this part. So please, read!

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><p>Hayner and Olette were happily married almost ten years after high school. Ten years after not buying that fourth ice cream, ten years after growing apart and coming together, they married on a hot summer day. They provided refreshments and, without needing to consult the other, enjoyed seasalt ice cream for the one that they stopped trying to remember.<p>

But this isn't a story of marriage or romance.

Olette was halfway through her second pregnancy when the name came to her. Out of nowhere, it came to her mind in her sleep. Her dream said one word -_Roxas-_ and she sat bolt upright, screaming the name and awaking her husband.

Hayner watched her, infinitely confused for his wife, who was shaking and crying and kept muttering that name over again -_Roxas_- and he didn't know how but _somehow_ he knew that name, too. There was no jealousy, no wondering if maybe Olette wasn't as faithful as he thought, because judging by the look on her face and the pounding of his heart, this was bigger than the both of them.

Instead, Hayner just hooked an arm around his wife and held her close, let her shake and maybe, just maybe, he shook alongside her with the force of memories that were not his own.

After endless minutes of muttering, Olette turned to Hayner and looked up at him with wide, brokenhearted eyes. "Hayner… we forgot about Roxas!"

Hayner didn't ask, only nodded. His own dream was haunting and painful -_and was it really just a dream? Or was it a memory long forgotten, of Struggle matches won by not-Seifer and a championship won by not-Setzer, and four kids sitting on a clocktower staring at the eternal sunset?_- but he didn't hear the name, it didn't haunt him like it did Olette.

"How could we forget about Roxas? What kind of friends _were we_?!" Olette continued, shaking her head sharply, upsetting her messy brown hair. She abandoned her husband, tossing the duvet off of her and kicking her feet to the side. She scrambled out of the bed, grabbed her slippers and robe, and rushed out of the room and down the stairs, toward the basement.

Hayner was close behind her, following her if only to make sure that she didn't hurt herself. He followed without robe or slippers, panic embedding in as his lovely wife panicked all on her own.

He chased her down the basement, gasping when she came to a stop at the old, beat up freezer.

The old, beat-up freezer was, in fact, the one from the Usual Spot, from over a decade ago. And as if that wasn't the best part, it still held over four hundred little bars of ice cream, carefully contained and moved in a freezing moving van all its own because they didn't even know why but they wanted to keep it as it was, for the non-friend that they couldn't remember.

Their daughter Annette, who was two years already, often questioned about the freezer. The one time she'd been caught trying to reach in and steal an ice cream, Hayner had nearly panicked and snatched her hand from the freezer, holding her far from it, though to protect her or the freezer he didn't really know. All he'd said by explanation was "this freezer is very important, and those are very old anyway. Never touch them". He'd then bought her two ice creams afterwards, and she didn't question further.

"Olette…" Hayner said carefully, stopping at her side and setting a hand on her waist, to draw her away from the freezer.

Olette wouldn't be deterred. She yanked his hand away and tore open the freezer, staring down at the endless packets of ice cream. "These… these were for him. They were always for him. Roxas. We always got four, but we only needed three but we got four because there _should have been four_. R-Roxas was on the clocktower. And at the beach. You remember that p-picture? That picture of the three of us, but there's this big blank space right next to you, like someone should be there but wasn't. Pence even pointed it out that one time, remember? It was framed in the Usual Spot, sitting on the desk and I remember always thinking there was a boy there when there wasn't but there _was_, wasn't there? Roxas. He was always there."

Hayner wrapped his arm around her, using his free arm to close the lid. "Yeah, yeah I remember all that." He did remember always bringing a bag of four ice creams to the Usual Spot and always tossing one into the freezer. "But… who _was_ Roxas?"

Olette made a noise like she was going to explain, but then her expression fell. "I… I don't know. He was just there. No reason why, always just there until just after that Struggle competition, just the summer after eighth grade. Then it's like he disappeared. Did he? Did someone take him away?"

"I don't think so. Not in the way that you think, anyway."

Olette dropped her arm on top of the freezer, turning a little to glance sideways at her husband. "Roxas was…" She bit her cheek and lifted a hand, tracing it through the air as though stroking a face. "Roxas was the boy with the deepest blue eyes. He was the boy with the yellow hair and the sad smile, like he knew something was wrong but would stay happy for our sake." She continued tracing a boy's face, touching places for the eyes as she said them, sweeping upwards as she explained his hair and drew a thin smile.

Hayner watched in amazement as a face did appear, melting down into detail, like she was painting on thin air. A boy at fifteen years old, with deep blue eyes and yellow hair and a sad smile that said that he was upset but he was happy for them.

Olette stopped tracing his face, perhaps not seeing the apparition or perhaps continuing to bring it to life. Instead, she started over gently sloping shoulders and down long arms. "He… he was all black and white. Light and Darkness, all in one person. He was so… mysterious. Even after being our best friend for years, we would never really understand him, would we, Roxas?"

The face didn't move, didn't answer. It was nothing more than a painting on air.

"He had these checkerboard wrist bands that you liked to tease him about but really we all thought they were great, because somehow they always exemplified him, and… and around his neck, he had a strange little cross. You remember those white things? Those Nobodies? That same cross was always around his neck, right… there…" She finished off the cross on the boy, and it sparkled, and the boy blinked.

Both adults jumped. Olette quickly withdrew her hand, pressing back into Hayner's arm.

The boy blinked hard, and wiggled his arms and watched them go, and then he looked up at them, like he really hadn't noticed their presence. He didn't look entirely real; he was almost transparent, like a ghost, and he looked flat as a painting, but as he turned his head to peer around him, they saw that he looked pretty three-dimensional. He was three-dimensionally flat; an interesting notion.

"...Roxas?" asked Olette quietly, gaining his attention.

The boy looked their way again, actually looking at them. The small smile that Olette had traced crossed his face was like she had explained; sad, like he knew that something was wrong but would be happy for their sake. "Hey guys."

His voice echoed a little, and it was clear to them that this boy, this "Roxas" from memories they never had, wasn't really there. Not entirely, not in the way that they were. They didn't know how he _was_ there even as he was, and yet… there he stood.

"...Hi…" Olette greeted.

Roxas looked around him silently, peering at their silent home in Twilight Town, just outside of the clocktower so they could go up there if they wanted and remember what had never happened. Then he looked back at them, and the sadness was gone. "Congratulations," he said, nodding at Olette's left hand. The delicate diamond ring situated on her ring finger was the reason behind his word, and Olette twitched her finger, looking down at it.

Neither said anything.

Roxas didn't seem put off. "I kind of always thought it would be you two. I mean, you and Pence… I dunno, it wasn't gonna happen. You were almost too close. And you were always one of those 'cherish old memories' kind of people, so I figured someone from school, and you and me… that wasn't possible. I guess I always knew that," he continued, shoving his hands into his pockets.

The cross around his neck glittered.

Still, neither adult spoke, too caught up in returning old memories that they couldn't entirely remember having or not having.

"Annette is beautiful," Roxas continued after a moment, and it was unclear to the two if he was just talking to talk, or if he was trying to pull a response out of them. Either was totally possible.

Olette opened her mouth, kind of panicking again. Her eyes flashed toward the ceiling; Annette's room was just upstairs and a room over. Roxas, she saw when she looked to him, had glanced for a moment to her room as well.

"...Guys…?" Now it made more sense that he was just talking, but that he was talking because he wanted an answer, he wanted to hear them speak because over the past two decades or so, he'd missed them.

Olette tried to speak, but her heart caught in her throat. Instead she reached to the boy, touched her fingers to his cheek. She was surprised to find that, despite his transparency, her fingers met solid, warm skin. She laid her palm flat against his cheek and wasn't entirely sure how it was possible, but she just touched him, stroked his cheek with her thumb and let herself drown in the memories of the boy she hadn't really known she'd forgotten.

"Roxas," said Hayner softly, and the boy looked from Olette to him, watching curiously and happily. "What are you doing here? Where _were_ you?" Hayner was handling his own returning memories rather well, memories of a boy who could Struggle better than the best of them, who had learned how to skateboard with him when they were ten, who had traveled through school with them for nearly nine years and then had mysteriously disappeared from everything.

"I had to go... had to wake up someone important," Roxas explained. He picked up Olette's hand and just held it, smiling.

"Why couldn't you come back?"

"'No one would miss me,'" Roxas whispered, but from the faraway look in his eyes they weren't sure if he was remembering something or answering their question.

He blinked a moment and then smiled stronger still. "Once he woke up, I had to stay with him. Watch over him. He'd get into a lot of trouble otherwise. He's a bit of a danger magnet." There was affection in his gaze; whoever this person was, he was very fond of him.

"You're not anymore?" Olette asked. It _had_ been about fifteen years since their returning memories mentioned him.

"No, I still am. I always will. I'm just taking a break. He said it'd be good for me." He glanced behind him at the freezer. "...You guys collected a lot of ice cream."

Olette nodded and swallowed, rubbing the back of his hand with hers. "Yeah. And we didn't even remember why…" She made a noise, almost of discomfort, and touched Roxas' face again, pulling her hand from his. "We never meant to forget you, Roxas…"

"I don't blame you, Olette. What happened… all of it wasn't real, anyway. It was all fake. Fake feelings, fake people, fake… fake memories. I'm a Nobody, we aren't supposed to be remembered."

"But it was real to you," Olette commented softly.

"...Yeah. It was all real to me."

Olette's eyes softened a little. "I'm sorry."

Roxas quickly waved her off, cheering himself up. "It's better now. And… you remembered eventually, so that's all that matters, right? I mean, even if you did before, you couldn't exactly do anything about it."

"I suppose…" Olette bit her cheek uncertainly.

"Did you want one?" asked Hayner cautiously, his eyes flickering to the freezer. "An ice cream? I mean, I don't know how good they are, but we've got a box of good ones upstairs for Annette, and she doesn't seem to mind if someone else takes one… and we could run upstairs and grab one, if you want."

A real smile gracing his lips, Roxas laughed. "I can't. But I appreciate the offer. You really should throw all those out; they're bad by now. It's been years. You could probably use the freezer space."

"Naw; we've got another in the garage," Hayner said with a shrug, scratching his cheek and flushing with embarrassment.

"You kept this one just for ice cream?" Roxas asked, quirking one golden brow.

"Yeah. I guess, even if our heads didn't remember you, our hearts did. They wouldn't let us stop."

Roxas smiled again, shaking his head. "...That sounds like just the dorky sort of thing that Sora would say. Listen, guys, I've gotta go. Don't forget me this time." The cross around Roxas' neck twinkled and he slowly became less and less visible.

"Wait. You know Sora?" Hayner asked, dropping his hand from Olette's waist.

Roxas shrugged, blending into the environment like a chameleon. "You could say that."

Olette bit her lip when he was nearly out of sight, gripping her husband's hand. "We won't forget you, Roxas! You're still our best friend! Bye!"

Roxas didn't have the time to answer, only waved at them, middle and forefinger extended. He twinkled out of sight silently.

Hayner and Olette were left alone with their memories and the silence.

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><p>There you go, my most recent offering to the KH fandom! How was it? Please let me know in a review! As always, all reviews will be answered!<p>

Love,

~YAJJ


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